Shapps issues allocations guidance, vows to end social housing "injustice"
The Housing Minister has today published new allocations guidance for consultation, claiming that it would bring to an end the “injustice” associated with the system for social housing.
Grant Shapps said councils and housing associations would enjoy greater freedom to reward achievement and encourage housing mobility.
The minister also claimed that the reforms would release these organisations “from the shackles of the current tick-boxing approach for allocating social homes”.
Local housing authorities will be required to have regard to the guidance in exercising their functions under Part 6 of the Housing Act 1996.
Areas the consultation covers include:
- The scope of the guidance and the definition of an allocation
- An overview of the amendments to Part 6 made by the Localism Act 2011
- Eligibility and qualification
- Framing an allocation scheme
- Allocation scheme management
- Working with Private Registered Providers and contracting out
The Department of Communities and Local Government cited a number of councils that it said wanted a more flexible approach to allocations.
They include:
- Westminster: The council proposes that households where the main applicant has been working under a written contract for at least two years will be given priority, and people who have been seeking work for the same period of time will be eligible for extra points if they have been engaged with the council's homelessness employment learning project
- Southend: The authority intends to put aside 20% of its 6,200 homes for households in employment. These 'work plus' properties will incentivise and reward those in work and create more mixed communities, the DCLG said
- Manchester: Households on the waiting list who are working will be put in a higher priority band than they would otherwise have been.
- Wandsworth: The council has proposed a pilot scheme called Housing into Work. Applicants who are unemployed, and of working age and physically capable of work, will be granted two-year tenancies on the condition that they find make every effort to find work or enroll on a training course.
Grant Shapps said: "For years the system for social housing has been associated with injustice - where rewards are reaped for those who know how to play the system the best. Despite this terrible image a lazy consensus in social housing has ensured that, for an entire generation, no one has bothered to do anything about it."
The minister claimed that the guidance would mean people benefitted from living in a social home “when they need it, for as long as they need it”.
He added that a social tenancy would no longer be seen as “a stagnant option for life, but a launch pad to fulfill aspirations”.
The consultation is open until 30 March 2012. The paper can be downloaded here.
The DCLG is also consulting on two sets of draft regulations relating to the Armed Forces.
“The regulations will ensure that former Service men and women who have urgent housing needs are given 'additional preference' (i.e. high priority) for social housing - so that they will be at or near the top of housing waiting lists; and that Service personnel who move from base-to-base do not lose their qualification rights,” the Department said.
